The Fourth Seal

Rudolf Steiner, September 16, 1907:

"Human beings come from even higher worlds, and they will again ascend to these higher worlds. The form that human beings have today will by then have disappeared from the world. We will take up again that which is in the outer world, the individual letters from which we are assembled; our form will have identified itself with the world form. In a certain trivial presentation of Theosophy it is taught and talked about that we should seek the god within ourselves. However, anyone wanting to find the god within must seek in the works that are spread out in the universe. Nothing in the world is mere matter; it just seems that way. In reality, all matter is the expression of spirituality, tidings of the effectiveness of the god. Human beings will, as it were, expand their being in the course of the coming ages. More and more, human beings will identify themselves with the world, so that we will be able to portray them with the form of the cosmos, instead of the human form. This you see in the fourth seal, with the rock, the sea, and the pillars.

That which moves through the world today as cloud will give up its substance in order to form the body of the human being. The forces that are with the spirits of the Sun today will deliver to human beings in the future the power that builds their spiritual forces in an infinitely elevated manner. It is to this Sun power that the human being strives. In contrast to the plant, which sinks its head--the root--toward the center of the Earth, human beings turn their head to the Sun; one day we will unite our head with the Sun and receive higher forces. This we see portrayed in the Sun-face that rests on the cloud-body on the rock and the pillars. Human beings will have become self-creative then; as the symbol of this completed creation, a colorful rainbow surrounds the human being in the fourth seal. You can find a similar seal in the Acopalypse of John. In the middle of the clouds, there is a book. The Apocalypse says that the initiate must eat this book. Here is indicated the time when human beings not only will receive wisdom from without, but will also permeate themselves with it as they do with food today--when they will themelves be an embodiment of wisdom."





Source: Rocicrucianism Renewed, pp. 90-91